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Not many Cisco Systems employees have the ability to make the jump from software engineer to travelling musician. But Vienna Teng, 24, made that leap last August when she quit her job after two years with Cisco in San Jose. Teng released a full-length album titled Waking Hour three months later.
Soon after, on Jan. 20, she performed on the Late Show with David Letterman. Letterman said on the show, "I've heard the entire CD and there's not a dud on this. You get your money's worth here, ladies and gentlemen."
Now Teng, a pianist and singer, is on tour around the country to promote the album, and she is scheduled to visit Sunnyvale on March 23.
The transition from software engineer to musician was not difficult, Teng says. "I wasn't meant to be in a corporate environment for very long. It was a dramatic change, but I was ready for it, and I've been thoroughly enjoying myself since," she says.
Teng, who composes her own music and writes her own lyrics, had a dream of performing professionally as a young girl in junior high school, but at that point it was only a dream, she says. "For a long time it was wishful thinking," Teng says. "It wasn't until college that I started to realize that it was possible."
Teng grew up in Saratoga and learned to play piano at the age of five. Her parents enrolled her in classes because they noticed that she wanted to play every instrument she came across. "My parents never really had to bug me as a kid to practice," Teng says.
Teng wrote her first song at age six and had composed an album full of instrumentals by age 16.
At Stanford, while Teng was switching her major from medicine to computer science, she was performing all over town. An appreciative audience began to form around Teng's music, and her fans began circulating bootleg tapes around campus.
After graduating at age 21, Teng performed in local coffee shops and other intimate venues in the Bay Area, and a year later her reputation caught Virt Records' attention.
The rest is history, Teng says, and she has no plans to go back to the computer science industry. "The transition was scary at times, but I've never really looked back," Teng says.
Her music is a combination of light folk and pop music, though it doesn't rigidly fit either definition. "It's folk music that's piano-based, and I would hope it's not as shallow as pop music," Teng says.
Teng's music is a way of recording her observations about life. Teng says, "It's my way of keeping a notebook, my medium for expression."
Teng will give a free concert at the Sunnyvale Public Library on March 23 at 3 p.m.
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Photograph by Adam Tow